I waited for one of them to say, “Okay, Dad, we’re with you,” or “Don’t worry, Dad, we can handle this.” Instead, Jack looked over at Lilly and said, “What’d you think of it?”
She looked back at him, puzzled. “Think of what?”
“Dad’s speech.”
She grinned. “I thought the reference to my melodramatic friends and the pity party was uncalled-for, but other than that, it wasn’t too bad.”
“A little on the corny side,” Jack said.
The waitress was approaching.
“If you two are finished busting my balls, it’s time to order,” I said.
We spent the rest of the meal talking about other things, primarily the Beck murder case, which was no closer to being solved despite the intense pressure being applied by the media and every opportunistic politician within a hundred miles. We got back to the house around eight. Caroline was still asleep. Jack and Lilly wasted no time heading back towards their own beds.
I took Rio and went for a run, washed my truck, read the newspaper, and puttered around the house until noon. I helped Caroline get lunch ready while Jack and Lilly rode into town to pick up a book Lilly needed for school. After lunch, we decided we’d drive up to Red Fork Falls in Unicoi County and do a little hiking. We were just pulling out of the driveway when my cell phone rang.
It was Lee Mooney, and the news wasn’t good.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Caroline. “I have to go.”
Another gruesome trip, first to a modest ranch-style home in a tidy neighborhood outside Jonesborough, then to a remote area near Buffalo Mountain. Two more dreamlike walks through the scenes of unspeakable crimes.
The victims were Norman Brockwell and his wife, Gladys. Gladys had been beaten and stabbed to death in her bed at their home outside of Jonesborough. Her daughter discovered the body after Norman and Gladys failed to show up for church. Norman had apparently been kidnapped and taken to Buffalo Mountain, where he’d been tied to a tree and shot a dozen times. A couple of hunters scouting deer sign for the upcoming bow season had discovered him about the same time his daughter was discovering his wife. Norman had been shot through the right eye. Gladys had been stabbed in the right eye. “Ah Satan” had been carved into Norman’s forehead. Inverted crosses had been carved into both of their necks. The Brockwells’ dog, a tiny apricot teacup poodle, had been beaten to death, probably with the butt of a pistol.
I spent most of the afternoon in a haze of shock and disbelief. At seven, I met Lee Mooney in Jonesborough. He was waiting for me in a conference room just down the hall from my office. Sitting with him at the table were Jerry Blake, the Special Agent in Charge of the TBI office in Johnson City, Hank Fraley, the agent who was running point on the Beck case, and Sheriff Bates.
All of the murders had happened in the county, which fell under Bates’s jurisdiction, but because both Bates and his lead investigators were relatively inexperienced in murder investigations, Mooney had assigned the case to the TBI. That hadn’t stopped Bates from talking to the press about the case, but up to that point, he’d been excluded from the investigation.
“I want to form a task force,” Lee Mooney said as soon as I sat down. “And I want you to head it up.”
I looked at him, incredulous, then looked around the table at the others. The TBI agents were staring down at the table. Bates was looking at the ceiling.
“Me?” I said. “What the hell do I know about heading up a task force, Lee?”
“You’re a leader. People trust your judgment. And you know how to handle the press.”
“And who would make up this task force?”
“Five or six guys from the TBI. A couple of detectives from Johnson City. The sheriff and a few of his people. We might even be able to get one of the local FBI guys involved.”
Jerry Blake was fiddling with a notepad.
“How long have you been a cop, Jerry?” I asked.
“Close to twenty-five years.”
“Ever been on a task force?”
“A couple.”
“What do you think about them? Be honest. Are they effective?”
Blake gave Mooney a sideways glance. “They’re bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Turf wars, mostly. The different agencies don’t trust one another; then they want to take credit for anything good that happens and they want to blame anything bad on somebody else. Lots of egos involved. You wind up with too many chiefs and not enough warriors. You have communication problems. Things that ought to get done don’t get done. Information that ought to be shared doesn’t get shared. It just doesn’t work very well.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “The only time I’ve ever seen a task force formed is when the police aren’t making any progress in a case and they want the public to think they’re doing something.”
“But that’s exactly where we are, Joe,” Mooney said. “Word of these killings is already leaking out. By morning, everybody in northeast Tennessee is going to know about it, and we’re going to have a panic on our hands. We have to make people think we’re doing something.”
“Where are we now?” I said to Fraley. “What do you have that you didn’t have before?”
Fraley looked around nervously, as though he were afraid to share information with Bates in the room. Blake’s assertion about distrust between law enforcement agencies was already evident.
“We’re still nowhere,” he said quietly. “We’ve got more footprints that we’ll compare with the Beck murder scene. My guess is that some of them will match up. We’ve got more tire tracks, but we know they’re not from the same vehicle that was at the Beck murder scene. We’ll compare the shell casings and bullets to see if they match, and I’m betting they will. We’ve got two more bodies with crosses carved into them and wounds to their right eyes. They carved ‘ah Satan’ into Norman Brockwell’s forehead just like they did on Mr. Beck. We’ve got hair and fiber and a couple of latent prints from the Becks’ van, but we’ve run the latents through AFIS and haven’t found a match. We’ve got hair and fiber from the Brockwells’ home. We’ve got the rope they used to tie Mr. Brockwell to the tree. The medical examiner says Mrs. Brockwell was probably stabbed with an ice pick, but we don’t have the weapon. She also says Mr. Brockwell had abrasions on his back, elbows, and knees. She thinks he rode out to the woods in the trunk of a car. We’re checking to see if we can find any connection between the Brockwells and the Becks. Talking to family, friends, acquaintances, people they worked with, anybody we can think of. But as of right now, we don’t have a single suspect.”
“The first thing we should do is tell the media the cases aren’t related,” Mooney said. “That should at least keep people from panicking.”
“Forget about the media,” I said. “Somebody’s going to leak it whether we tell them or not. And what do you mean by ‘panic,’ Lee? Do you think people are going to riot in the streets? They’ll put better locks on their doors and they’ll buy guns and ammunition and guard dogs. They’ll watch out for their neighbors. We don’t need to start stonewalling, and I don’t think we need a task force. We don’t want to bring the feds and their egos anywhere near this, and as far as the local guys go, no offense to the sheriff, but the TBI agents are as good as it gets.”
“So what do you suggest?” Lee said. “Status quo? Tell people we’re doing all we can?”
“Give these guys some more time,” I said, nodding towards Fraley and Blake. “Let them do their jobs. And how about we let the sheriff handle the media from now on? I’ll brief him whenever he wants. He can do the press conferences, press releases, whatever. He has an outstanding reputation in the community and people trust him. What do you say, Sheriff? Will you keep the hounds at bay for me?”
“Whatever you need, brother Dillard,” Bates said.
I turned to Fraley again. He was in his early sixties, a little on the heavy side, with receding gray hair, a pink complexion, and a bulbous nose. Despite our shaky start, I’d already developed a significant amount of respect for him. He was smart, tough, hardworking, and despised bullshit.
“Surely you have some ideas,” I said.
Fraley cleared his throat. “A few,” he said.
I expected him to keep talking, but he sat there in silence.
Mooney stared at him. “Care to share them with the rest of the class?”
“Who kills a school principal?” Fraley said. “Think about it. Forced entry through the window at the side of the
